A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café (French: [kafe] ^ⓘ), is an establishment that serves various types of coffee drinks like espresso, latte, americano and cappuccino, and other beverages. An espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks. Some coffeehouses may serve iced coffee among other cold beverages, such as iced tea, as well as other non-caffeinated beverages. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, cakes, breads, pastries or donuts. Many doughnut shops in Canada and the U.S. serve coffee as an accompaniment to doughnuts, so these can be also classified as coffee shops, although doughnut shop tends to be more casual and serve lower-end fare which also facilitates take-out and drive-through which is popular in those countries, compared to a coffee shop or cafe which provides more gourmet pastries and beverages. In continental Europe, some cafés even serve alcoholic beverages, and it is popular in West Asia to offer a flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah, called shisha in most varieties of Arabic or nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek, and Turkish.

While café may refer to a coffeehouse, the term "café" can also refer to a diner, British café (also colloquially called a "caff"), "greasy spoon" (a small and inexpensive restaurant), transport café, teahouse or tea room, or other casual eating and drinking place. A coffeehouse may share some of the same characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria (a canteen-type restaurant without table service). Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations. Some coffeehouse chains operate on a franchise business model, with numerous branches across various countries around the world.

From a cultural standpoint coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: a coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. A coffeehouse can serve as an informal social club for its regular members. As early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer-songwriter performances, typically in the evening. The digital age saw the rise of the Internet café along similar principles.

The most common English spelling of café is the French word for both coffee and coffeehouse; it was adopted by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century. The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English. In Southern England, especially around London in the 1950s, the French pronunciation was often facetiously altered to /kæf/ and spelt caff.

The English word coffee and French word café (coffeehouse) both derive from the Italian caffè—first attested as caveé in Venice in 1570—and in turn derived from Arabic qahwa (قهوة). The Arabic term qahwa originally referred to a type of wine, but after the wine ban by Islam, the name was transferred to coffee because of the similar rousing effect it induced. European knowledge of coffee (the plant, its seeds, and the drink made from the seeds) came through European contact with Turkey, likely via Venetian-Ottoman trade relations.

The English word café to describe a restaurant that usually serves coffee and snacks rather than the word coffee that describes the drink, is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660. The first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Ottoman Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffee house).

The translingual word root /kafe/ appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Portuguese and French (café); German (Kaffeehaus or Café); Swedish (kafé or fik); Finnish (kahvila); Spanish (cafetería); Italian (caffè or caffetteria); Polish (kawa); Serbian (кафа / kafa); Ukrainian (кава (kava)); Turkish (kahvehane).

The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses have also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul in the 16th century and in Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.